Friday, January 05, 2007

How to change language if you are an expat in a foreign country

There have been complaints of people whose mother tongue is, for example, English, but is living in a foreign country, eg. Japan. When they log into their Blogger Dashboard, it is all in that foreign language and they have problems understanding it. For such cases, it is easy to change the language even if you are living in a foreign country. Sign into Dashboard, then at the top right hand corner of the Dashboard is this:

Right at the bottom is a section "Language" with a drop-down menu. Click the down arrow and a long lists of available languages will be shown. Selectg your preferred language and your preferred language will automatically be saved.

There is also another setting you can do. In the Dashboard, for the relevant blog, click SETTINGS, then click the FORMATTING sub-tab. Somewhere in the middle of the page will be a drop-down menu to set the language for the blog:

Click the down arrow and select your preferred language. Then at the bottom of the page, click "Save settings".

If that still didn't get the effect you want, you may have to change the language option of your browser.

For FireFox, in the menu bar at the top of the browser, click TOOLS > OPTIONS and in the pop up, click the "Advanced" tab . Then in the "Languages" section, click "Chose":

In the second section which is a drop-down menu for "Select a language to add...", click the down arrow and select your preferred language. Once you select the language, the "Add" button will become active. Click that. The rest, I have never tried because I have no need to change the preferred language of my browser, and you are on your own from there.

BTW, if you are like the majority of surfers who only have Internet Explorer, you should seriously consider getting the FireFox browser. I would highly recommend it, and if you go to FireFox with Google toolbar, you will see a screenshot of a section of a page from Blogger Help where Blogger recommend Firefox.

I am sorry, I am not an expat in a foreign country, so I have no personal experience with that. But I am guessing that you MAY be able to change that in the Dashboard via SETTINGS > FORMATING, and select the language of choice.

In my case, these steps don't work because in Taiwan EVERYTHING shows up in Chinese. Even those menus on the Dashboard are in Chinese so there are no English words like "Change Language" to click on.

If that's the case with you, then the following might help. I found this information posted by someone named Mishka, and they work for me.

Mishka's Solution:

"You need to make sure you have the language set in all three locations for it to stick and if you delete cookies it will revert and you'll have to do the settings again.

Here are the instructions that you can use even if you can't read the language being displayed.

Okay, a few things. First, you need to go into your browser settings and make sure that English is chosen as your preferred language.

Okay, if you are logged into blogger and on your blog's main page, you can click on the little blogger icon on the left top corner and it will take you to your dashboard. When you are on your dashboard, you should see your blog names below and your profile picture and name to the right. The third bullet down from the picture is the Change Language link. Click on that and select English and save (English should be the top one, and Save is the big orange button).

After you save, it should take you right back to your dashboard. Underneath the title to your blog, there should be a little gear icon on the right side. The second link is the one for the blogs settings, click on that. Formatting is the third link over from the left underneath the settings tab (which should be where you are if you camefrom the dashboard). The language settings is the 6th down from the top of the page. The save button is bright orange at the bottom of the page.

It is more of a google thing than it is a blogger thing (they think they are helping you out by adjusting the language based on IP address but it is supposed to default to your browser's language)."

I saw a blog that's written in english but besides each post there's a little square and saying German beside it, you mark there and it shows a text that was hidden, in german, of course the blogger did the translation himself, like I want to do, the question is: how can I do this hidden text and this place to check and show the hidden text. Thank you

Hi, my question is how can I have an option box for the person change to another language, for ex: I post in portuguese and in english, so if the person whants to read in english she mark the box like this "view my entry in english" and then check the box, if you whant i can show you a blogger that do this, I just don't do this now to don't invade her privacy. Thank you

Here I come again, sorry for didn't explain well what I needed. There is a blog "Sew mad", and if you visit it you 'll understand what I mean, that she can put a box for you to opition if you'll read her posts in english or german, how can i do this to on my blog? Thank you very much

Again about the two language blog, that's not so simple, the blog I mentioned before has a box to ckeck for uou to choose if you'll read in english or german, one of my doubts is where is the other part, english or german for eg. is saved. If you go at the end of each post you'll see this "view this in english" and a box to check, once you check this box all the post shows in english, but it's not a translator, she herself write both versions, I want to know how to hide one and have the same box for the person to check and change for the other language. Thank you again

I've changed the settings on my firefox browser AND I've set the language in my blog..but for some reason and this just happened recently--but my menu is in Korean. I can't read it?? And I've tried to go back to see what I might have changed or done.. and I don't know why it's still in Korean?? I've changed everything to English and still no luck?

That's good for setting the default language for a blog, but there does not seem to be an option to set individual posts to a non-default language. Any solution for expats who sometimes write posts in their local language for their neighbors to read?

Sorry Peter but your advice doesn't work if you are in a place that uses a non Latin written language, such as in Thailand or Japan- unless you can read the word 'English' in those scripts you have a list list of unreadable gobbledygook, impossible to choose from. Google needs to FIX THIS!!

yeah except i put mine in english, and the menu tabs in dashboard and editing interface are in english but all the options buttons below the overhead tabs are in Thai!

so i see two languages mixed in one web pageWQell dont google.. let cookies assume they know what language we speakat least the language chgange in blogger will show thai and english with a slash e.g. ไทย/English whereas in google accounts (which changes me back to thai every third browser refresh or page change!), the change search settings language interface, once change to thai, will show the languages to choose like this and this only;

ไทย | อังกฤษ | สวิสส | เยอรมัน ...

now laddies.. assuming you are monolingual (or even multilingual) and read only latin characters, i ask you, which of the four words above will change the language to english??

because any english person who gets their search settings automatically changed back to thai every 30 minutes will boggle when they try to change their langtuage back and see that all language names are writtten in Thai and Thai only!

what a stupid thing to overlook especially considering that i have commented on this problem in about 100 places where google employees read, and they still havent figured it out.. its simple guys.. just take 'ไทย' and change it to ไทย/English in the google search settings options instead of in only Thai, as well as the google homepage top right corner 'search settings'.. hey what if it changes to thai then no one can read it?

Dont you realize that once you change it to non roman characters then no one can read it to change it back.

My browser changes back to thai every 30 minutes even though i keep going to search settings and change it back to english

Makes me want to tie the programmer to a chair above a crocodile pond and tell him he has 3 minutes to tell me which of the thai words say 'change back to english' and if he cant ill feed him to the crocodiles! then he would regret his stupidity

wow withutalai.. i been practicing Tamil lately and i can read your name! only 3 weeks practice and can read it alreadyவி = w+i = WIடு = T + U (long U)= Tuத = Ta லை = vi + ]t = ]ai (Tamil ai vowel you write before the one it reads after - right to left in this case).

Brilliant! You not only gave me the helpful technical information I needed, but also got me to smile in the process! I see you also have some great tips! Looks like you're going to be the first blogger I follow. :o)